Sorry we did not have more time to talk to you after the flight, but we were on a quick turn around and the other crew needed our plane, while  we were taking theirs.  Since you wrote a letter for us and had it delivered to the cockpit, I will respond by writing a letter back to you.  Not too many people in grade 10 show initiative like that; it deserves response.

So, you want to fly for an airline?  How flattering!  I fly for an airline and I thought your letter to the cockpit showed some ingenuity and desire.  But are you sure that you want to fly as a job?  Have you a passion for anything else?  Computers, building things, science, anything at all?  If so, do it!  Forget flying as a job.  After you spend $100,000 on training at some aviation college, nobody is going to fall over themselves to offer you a job.  Even if your dad knows someone, it will be a big favor to hire you and actually pay you a wage equal to McDonald's restaurants to fly airplanes.  Most new commercial pilots start out flying for nothing (skydiving, glider tow, joyrides, etc) or close to nothing (flight instruction).  When you do get a thousand hours or so on single engine piston aircraft and want to move along to multi engine, then turboprop, then jets, you will find that at each step, people want you to be experienced before they hire you.  No multi-engine time?  No multi-job.  No turbine experience?  Can't hire you on turbine aircraft.  No jet time?  No jet job.

How to overcome this?  The military used to be a good way for someone else to pay for your initial flying experience.  However, they do not fly much these peaceful days, and you wear glasses, so forget it.  You are going to have to pay.  All the money you have and all you borrow will not be enough because a military pilot costs a million dollars a copy.  So, you will have to pay in hardship as well as cash.  First, your parents or student loans will pay for the initial $50k (flight school) or $100k (aviation college) for your basic flying licenses. With a basic commercial license and 200 hours, you are fully qualified to scrub toilets and throw baggage for an aircraft company.  In the middle of the wilderness, they may even let you come along flying as copilot sometimes on a small, single-crew aircraft where you are not legally needed. Or, if you want a job right away, you can become a flying instructor. After a couple of years starving doing whatever you have to do to get your first 1,000 hours or so, your first real job will likely be in some brutal climate in the arctic-there are more jobs turning over up there, but you generally have to show up for them on site. One fellow at our airline was hired directly on Twin Otter (twin turbine) aircraft simply because he already lived in Iqualuit.  Going to the middle of nowhere improves your job prospects flying, simply because nobody else may be available on the day the company needs a pilot, any pilot.  Nearly all the northern bush operators have commercial pilots working the ramp, throwing bags, doing general labor, waiting for a chance to fly.  For some, it never comes, so this is risky.  Flight instructing is more certain. Some airlines hire new pilots as second officers (engineers) on three-crew aircraft like the Boeing 727, with the understanding that one day they may fly.  But that day may never come, so this also is risky. General aviation, with small aircraft, brutal, dangerous conditions and low or non existent wages could hold you for many years away from your stated goal of flying for an airline. If you want a way out, it will cost you silver and gold.  

How much?  Well, I paid $8000 for my first Caravan job (a single engine turbine, 10 people).  The Learjet (8 passengers) job cost me $20,000.  Jetsgo, flying their airliners, charges its pilots about $35 000.00 to get hired.  Before you can even buy a jet job, though, you need about 4,000 hours total time and 1,500 multi-engine, all depending on the market at the time.  Once in the job, every 6 months, you will have a simulator flight test, which, if you fail, could result in your firing.  the apply for these jobs is $30k to $45k, which is less than unionized grocery store workers, or virtually any engineering job around.  Oh yes-for the first few years, you will have to take instructions and keep your mouth shut working around some very challenging people.  That is why the guy before you left the job.

Hey, you are still reading.  Why?  If flying costs so much and the competition is so fierce that pilots are paying to get hired, why not get a real job, where the company hiring pays you?  How do you feel right now?  Crushed?  Already thinking about what else you can do?  If so, great!  Go be an engineer, or doctor or scientist and fly as a hobby.  Stop reading now.

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On the other hand, if you are thinking "I do not care what this guy says.  I will spend every dime, work for nothing, go to the ends of the earth, do whatever it takes; I just want to fly", then you have what it takes to succeed as a pilot.  Your reward will not be in money, but I give you my personal guarantee: you will experience adventure.  Do you know what adventure is?  Adventure is closely linked to difficulty, obstacles, suffering and adversary.  Think about it:  what would climbing a mountain be if it was easy?  A hike.  A walk in the park.  Being a pilot is definitely not a walk in the park.  You will certainly face poverty and require all manner of ingenuity to escape from the little shoestring companies that you will start out flying for.

First, about the money to buy a job.  Yes, it is a bribe in order to hire you. However, it is also to pay for your training on a type of aircraft, and the company pays it back to you, usually over two years, more or less.  Otherwise, you could get the $35k worth of training and leave the next month to work for someone else.  Oh yes, there are some companies that do not pay you back, but those are run by...well--what do you call people who take your money and do not give it back?

You ask about education.  Simple.  Get some.  Legally, of course, you require no education at all, not even high school, to become a commercial pilot.  You will regret the day you decided not to get a degree.  Get it.  It will both help you and serve as a backup career. What kind of degree? Simple:  do what interests you, and, hopefully, will allow you to get a job.  Jobs are in engineering, science and business.  Any engineering is fine: mechanical, electrical, computer, chemical, physics, environmental, even aerospace.  Forget the arts degree, though, if you want to get a job.  What about the aviation college as a way to get a degree over two years and your commercial licenses as well?  Do what you like, but you should know that outside of a flying job, the aviation college degree is only marginally useful as toilet paper. In fact, since they are printed on thick, hard-to-crumple paper, they are not even good as toilet paper.  But that does not matter, right?  You are going to fly forever, so you will never need a degree that allows you to be anything other that pilot, right?  Right.  Until a passing car throws up a rock and impairs your vision, or until you get one of a hundred little ailments that disqualify you for an aviation medical.  There are exceptions to everything, of course.  If you just hate studying academics and can not stand a real university, then by all means go to the aviation college.  Remember, though, that the colleges charge more-often double-what it would cost to do your licenses at a little flying school. Unless, of course, you get in to a government funded college, like Seneca. If you can do that, go for it!  It is free flying, practically.  Too bad they pick so few candidates and mess up their minds so much as they are going through.

You ask which university is best for Aeronautics.  Are you Canadian?  The USA universities are larger, with more toys, but expensive unless you get a scholarship, which you should certainly apply for at 50 or 100 different places.  The Canadian schools will charge you tens of thousands less than foreign students are charged in any country.  I did a Masters of Aerospace Engineering at the Ottawa-Carlton Institute for Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, taking courses at both U of Ottawa and Carleton.  I would recommend them, it was great fun.  The University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS), where I started my PhD.,  is the largest and most respected place for Aerospace in the country. I would recommend the University of Toronto.  The University of BC, in Vancouver, where I did my honors undergraduate degree in Atmospheric Science, is a beautiful, warm and green campus surrounded by a nudist beach.  It has no aerospace program to speak of, but it is such a nice place to spend a few years, that it is worth going to.  McGill and a couple of other schools have smaller aeronautics programs as well, if you would like to go to Montreal or some other city.  Why not just apply to several schools you want and go where they give you an entrance scholarship? I got my private pilot license free though the Air Cadets and never paid a cent to go to university.  In fact, I made more money from going to university than I made working as a flight instructor.

You ask about autopilots.  Yes, automation has reduced the number of aircrew from many to only 2:  a master (the captain) and an apprentice (the copilot).  The navigator, radio operator and engineer are all gone.  But after working with Microsoft programs, would you trust a computer program to fly an airliner without a crew to take over?  How many times has your personal computer crashed?

All of the road to becoming an airline pilot has been written about extensively, usually by people who are trying to sell you flight training.  They lie. A book that does not lie is called "How to become and Airline Pilot"; you can find it at your library.  It is worth reading, even if it is from the USA, where the flying license is different from Canada.  Remember that articles written about the old times of massive flying boats, propeller planes delivering mail and airlines that have state monopolies are all talking about an era that is past.  Perhaps some of the romance never existed except in the fantasy of the authors.  Today flying is a low-profit, hard-scrabble business pursued by people simply because they love to fly.  Therein lies the reward:  you will, if you are one of these people, meet fast friends and be in company you enjoy.  You will be broke, but you will be happy. Even though the airlines go bankrupt every 5 years on average, the friendships remain.  You friends will help you get a new job, as you help them.

Final tips?  Sure.  Get all the education you can handle.  Do what interests you.  If your father is rich, you can bypass some hardship by buying yourself a job at an airline-see Flightsafety, Comair and others.  Otherwise, you do it the honest, adventurous way.  Have fun!

Walter